It might be worth reminding everbody about now that the Bush tax cuts were a poor idea even when they were first proposed. Like so much else done by the Bush administration (and pushed by the right generally), they amounted to yet another means of redistributing from the have-less to the have-mores that Bush called his base. The following is a good animation depicting the interrelationship of distributional issues and the tax cuts, showing visually how the riches from the last few decades went to the wealthy and then the tax cuts added to the problem by favoring them over ordinary folk.
"the Bush Tax Cuts" (Oct 14, 2004)
One can only wish that those GOP voters in the Senate and House this week had gone back to reiew these points and then listen to their own guru, John McCain, who thought that the projected 2003 deficit of 246 billion (without tax cuts and war costs) was scandalously high. He called "alarming" the 10-year deficit prediction for the cost of the Bush tax cuts of $1.8 trillion, especially when it didn't even include the war costs, and that such a deficit could "lower the standard of income" for generations of Americans. That is, in 2003, even the crusty rightwinger John McCain recognized that at a time of deficits and significant war costs (back when he "hoped" that we would have a "brief, successful war in Iraq"), passing tax cuts of the magnitude proposed in 2003 (including the treatment of dividends for the wealthy elite at the preferential capital gains rate) would be irresponsible lack of statesmanship that disregarded the fiscal security of the American people. He spent some time emphasizing the fact that the extent of war costs connected with the Bush invasion of Iraq were not knowable and could be quite high if the war "didn't meet our best estimates for its duration"
Of course, most Americans have suffered throughout the last decade from the irresponsibility of the Bush tax cuts that rewarded the wealthy and continued the "winner-take-all politics" noted by Joseph Hacker and Paul Pierson (in a book to be reviewed soon).
"John McCain Ardently Opposing Bush Tax Cuts" (2003)
And a bonus--a graph showing the effect of the Bush Tax cuts on the deficit if they are not paid for other tax increases or appropriate spending cuts.
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